


you are what you love (not who loves you)

by ShanleenKinnJaskey



Series: author's favorites [37]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, But it's quickly shut down, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Character Study, F/F, Female Homosexuality, Female Steve Rogers, Female Tony Stark, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Male-Female Friendship, Rhodey Is a Good Bro, Sexuality, Slut Shaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 12:29:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7532866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShanleenKinnJaskey/pseuds/ShanleenKinnJaskey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She especially hates the way her father says her name, dismissive and uncaring. It's not even that he's ashamed or anything, he just doesn't care. He doesn't care about her inventions, doesn't care about her sexuality, doesn't really care about <em>her</em>. It's just off-handed, easily forgotten comments like "engineering is not a girl's world" or "have you met my daughter Antonia? She's a real doll" or "that sweet young lady, Antonia dearest."</p><p>They're not so easily forgotten for Toni.</p><p>'Cause the thing is, see, that Toni isn't her father's perfect doll of a daughter. She wears Star Wars t-shirts and jeans and leather jackets because she likes them, wants to go to Comic-Con more than the galas hosted at Stark mansion, and just all around just kind of gives no fucks about the family business.</p><p>Toni's kicking ass and taking names in her climb to prove herself as the best and the brightest, regardless of gender, prejudices, or underestimation, and her father is going to eat his words, just you watch.</p><p>Toni Stark deserves a happy ending, even if that happily-ever-after doesn't last forever. For now, this is what she wants, and for now, this is what she'll get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you are what you love (not who loves you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirgewithoutmusic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirgewithoutmusic/gifts), [ann2who](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ann2who/gifts).



> Title is from "Save Rock And Roll" by Fall Out Boy and Elton John.
> 
> This is primarily written because we need more females and more lesbian couples in this fandom, as well as an honest look into how different Toni would have turned out because of the prejudices and conceptions exerted on her as a girl. How different would she have turned out?

_"It's hard to stay inside my head when words keep pouring out_

_Like starlight crashing through the room, we'll lose our feathers_

_Yes, I know it hurts at first but it gets better_

_It gets better..."_

_-fun._ , It Gets Better

 

_"Drown our youth with useless warnings_

_Teenage rules they're fucked and boring_

_We really need to see this through_

_We never wanted to be abused_

_We'll never give up, it's no use_

_If we're fucked up you're to blame..."_

_-Blink 182,_ Anthem Part 2

 

Antonia Ella Stark _hates_ her name, hates the way it either comes out sounding fragile and feminine because of the Ella or cold and unfeeling because hello, she's a  _Stark_ and that's just how Starks work.

She especially hates the way her father says it, dismissive and uncaring. It's not even that he's ashamed or anything, he _just doesn't care_. He doesn't care about her inventions, doesn't care about her sexuality, doesn't really care about _her_. It's just off-handed, easily forgotten comments like "engineering is not a girl's world" or "have you met my daughter Antonia? She's a real doll" or "that sweet young lady, Antonia dearest."

They're not so easily forgotten for Toni.

'Cause the thing is, see, that Toni isn't her father's perfect doll of a daughter. She's wicked smart, and that's not bragging- it's the certifiable truth (trust me, she's had it checked). She listens to AC-DC and not because of any kind of rebellious inclinations- it's just because she likes it (the rebellion, the sleeping around and drinking and playboy attitude- that comes later, when she's in a place somewhere between not giving a fuck and pleading for attention. For now, though, she's just Toni and that in itself seems to frustrate her father and dear Obi). She wears Star Wars t-shirts and jeans and leather jackets because she likes them, wants to go to Comic-Con more than the galas hosted at Stark mansion, and just all around kind of gives no fucks about the family business.

(It frustrates her parents to no end, but she's just learned to roll with their reactions.)

There's only a single piece of jewelry that she wears, and that's an old ring that Jarvis' wife Carole gave Toni before she died. It's not much, just a simple band of brass, but it's heartfelt. It's honest. It's loving, and Toni wears it even as it gets banged up and she gets banged up. She wears it either around her finger or on a chain hanging from her neck, enjoying the feel of it against her skin.

It's a reminder, you know, a reminder that no matter what, she loves someone and they love her in return.

 

Toni fights and claws her way through people's prejudices and misconceptions, taking them out one precise calculation at a time.

You see, she's not going to let people see her femaleness, see her size and her abrasive personality, and let them use that against her. She knows she's the best damn brain in the land and the rest of her doesn't matter when competing for recognition and approval. It doesn't fucking matter that she swears a bit too much, or that she actually likes sex _a lot,_ or that she isn't beautiful in the conventional sense- she's the best and she knows it.

Who cares if her best friend is the mansion's butler? Toni's kicking ass and taking names in her climb to prove herself as the best and the brightest, regardless of gender, prejudices, or underestimation, and her father is going to eat his words, just you watch.

 

When she graduates high school at fifteen and gets accepted to MIT, she has a chance to reinvent herself.

(Not much of one, admittedly, as pretty much knows who Antonia Stark is when asked, but this is somewhere that wasn't her dad's first and she will make it her own, just you watch.)

She introduces herself to people as Toni. She likes the feel of it against her tongue, the way it flows like a man's name but feels like a woman's. It's the I, she thinks, that one small detail that sets her apart.

She sets herself apart even while gaining a friend in James "Rhodey" Rhodes. 

-

Her sexuality crisis at sixteen goes something like this:

_Breasts are nice._

_Dicks...they're okay, but nowhere near as great._

There's not much more to it, other than the realization that one more door is shutting between her and her father.

She really can't bring herself to care.

(Her and Rhodey do get to add admiring girls to their list of conversation topics, already spanning from the merits of Spock/Kirk to aerodynamic lift to how rigged the Oscars were to the chances the Yankees had of making it to the World Series.

There's a reason why he's her best friend.)

 -

Her parents die the February of the first year she's working on her master's dissertation. She's eighteen years old, just able to vote and with a double bachelor's degree in hand (Mechanical Engineering and Astrophysics), and then her parents are ripped away from her.

She stands at their funeral in a black floor-length dress made of expensive (but itchy) lace, Rhodey at her side (Jarvis died a few years back), and she can't figure out whether she's crying over her father or not. Her mother supported her in every way she knew how, but her father never really seemed to care.

Still, her parents are dead, and she  _does_ cry. She's not completely heartless, no matter what the press says, and so she grieves, twisting the old, beaten ring around her finger in some strange imitation of a hug.

 -

Rhodey graduates that spring with a master's degree in aeronautical engineering and joins the Air Force, leaving with a promise to visit her for every holiday. 

Toni fucks her way through her master's degree, spending her days in the lab and her nights in bars and strangers' beds.

She's a grown ass woman- she can do what she wants.

-

She gets her doctorate degree from a professor she's pretty sure she slept with at one point during her master's work, but who honestly gives a fuck. Rhodey is there in the audience, on temporary leave from the Air Force, and he's the only family she's got, sad as that may seem. He cheers her on when she accepts the diploma and then takes her drinking. Sure, with Rhodey she can't get as outrageously drunk as she would like, but that's probably for the best anyway. She has a meeting tomorrow when she'll accept her position as C.E.O. of Stark Industries, and fuck anyone who gets in her way.

-

(And of course, people _do_ get in her way, as they are wont to do, and she shuts those fuckers down.)

 

(She picks up, somewhere in here, on the fact that the tabloids are referring to her as the Stark Slut. It really gets on her nerves sometimes that Harry Osborne can sleep around and be called a playboy but when _she_ does it, she's violating some social norm.

She doesn't stop, though.

So what if she takes a lot of dates home on the first night, that she likes sex and romance equally? She's human, and she has her wants. She's not going to reserve herself for some faceless husband or wife, especially when she can't see herself settling down sometime soon.

But speaking of which, something that does irritate her is that people say she cheats on her partners. Um, no, she only ever sleeps with people she's in a relationship with (even if that relationship only lasts a night).

Who cares if she sleeps with women or men, with people her age or those older than her, with one or a few at a time? Everything is consensual, protected, truthful, and clean.

She's a grown ass woman- she doesn’t have to think about what others think, how others decide to judge her.

So fuck off, because seriously, Toni Stark's love life is her own business and it doesn't deserve any of this slut-shaming.

Nothing she does is shameful.)

 

 

Toni wakes up in Afghanistan with a car battery shoved between her breasts and her life hanging by a very precarious thread.

She wears a hijab to survive as she and Yinsen build the Iron Warrior in its most basic form, Carole Jarvis' ring dangling underneath of the head wrap and clinking against the arc reactor.

-

Toni claws her way out of that cave in the Iron Warrior suit, only pausing to shed a tear for Yinsen. She'd never met a man of his age that had believed in her that much, who had put that kind of undying faith in her and her abilities. 

Besides Rhodey, she hasn't really had any man really put any kind of faith in her intelligence like Yinsen does. 

-

When she gets on that helicopter, the first thing she can think of doing in her burned, heatstroke-woozy state of mind is to wrap Rhodey in a hug and swear never to take him for granted again.

So she does, and it feels fucking fantastic. 

-

When she gets home she cancels the weapons program on National TV so that the board and Obi can't argue with her on it. Her hopelessly incompetent P.A., hired for her by Obi, almost screws that up, so she has JARVIS help select her a new one, but at least the press conference everything goes well.

(Sure, Obi's pissed as hell, but you can't please everyone.)

 

Virginia "Pepper" Potts is an honest-to-fucking-god gift from the heavens. (If Toni remembers correctly, she thinks she's heard rumors about Norse gods in the midwest. Well, never hurts to cover all of her bases anyway, right?) She's trustworthy, smart, and frankly a perfect Slytherin. She's probably better than Toni herself at wheeling and dealing, probably owing to the fact that Pepper's not as much of an asshole as Toni is. But hey, beggars can't be choosers, right? Toni has the engineering brains and Pepper's got the charisma of ol' Howard himself.

(Not that Tony would  _ever_ compare the sheer awesomeness that is Pepper Potts to the neglectful, closeted-alcoholic man that was Howard Stark.)

Toni hires her on the spot.

(Well, after she has JARVIS and Rhodey vet Pepper for the job of her P.A., but she knew that was going to be cursory as soon as she watched the red-haired bombshell in action. Pepper's fantastic.)

 -

(Oh, and by the way, Pepper totally kicks ass. After that whole thing with Obi nearly killing Toni and ending up getting nearly killed by Pepper, Toni's never letting Pepper's foot get anywhere near that close to her face  _ever again_.)

 

Toni's never felt that helpless before.

She sits on the sofa, unable to breathe, unable to _live_ , only able to watch as Pepper takes out Obi with two sweeping kicks and rushes to grab Toni's replacement reactor.

With that frantic twist, with the jumping restart of Toni's fragile heart, she sucks in a couple of choked, gasping breaths.

"God, Toni," Pepper says, collapsing onto the armchair next to Toni and whipping out her phone as she does so, "I was terrified I was going to lose you."

"Don't worry," Toni rasps out, still trying to get used to the feeling of oxygen gushing through her windpipe, "I'm like a cockroach- I'm hard to get rid of."

Pepper gives her a wane smile before holding her phone to her ear. "Yes," she says, "I'd like full back up in the penthouse. Dr. Stark was physically assaulted and the perpetrator is unconscious." She pauses for a moment, listening to the voice on the other end of the phone, and then nods. Her voice takes on an authoritative tone as she continues. "Just hurry up, Jenkins, got it?" Then the call ends, and she slouches back in the chair, presumably exhausted.

"I'm never getting on your bad side," Tony mumbles, feeling lightheaded, and Pepper grins.

"Don't worry, Toni," she says, "I don't think you're capable of that."

 -

Her PTSD gets really bad after that. She finds herself waking up in the middle of the night, covered in a sheen of sweat and aching deep inside. She lays there, in bed, trembling from the force of nightmares, and all she can think of is the feeling of not being able to breathe, burning to a crisp in Afghanistan and freezing in her lonely penthouse. 

She has to remind herself every time: it'll get better, most likely.

 -

Sometimes she'll be working in the lab one moment and then she look up the next and find a half hour has slipped by- she's gone blank, slipped away into memories of damp and dark. 

 _It'll get better,_ she tells herself, picking up a screwdriver in one trembling hand and tugging her hoodie a bit tighter with the other.

_It has to._

 

So she gets palladium poisoning, promotes Pepper to C.E.O. (once again, Pepper kicks ass, can keep Toni in a relatively workable condition, and can schmooze with the best of them), and Pepper hires her a new P.A. Why, as she's going to die soon, Toni's not quite sure, but 'cause Pepper doesn't know she's dying and she kind of wants to keep it that way she only complains a  _little._

And besides, Natalie Rushman's kind of cute and  _really_ competent but honestly kind of scary so Toni guesses she's okay to keep.

-

When Natalie Rushman ends up being Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow, an international assassin and spy, Toni's not that surprised.

Natashalie _was_ always scarily competent. 

 

When she meets Sydney Rogers, she's not sure what to think. Sydney made it in an era that thought that all women were good for was popping out babies and being schoolteachers, and becoming the world's first superhero is honestly a pretty major accomplishment. Toni has to admit that Sydney Rogers has plenty of gumption and honestly, that  _ass_ , but then again there's the fact that she spent her life resenting Sydney Rogers, Captain America, because Toni's father idolized Sydney but thought that Toni would be content to be a housewife.

Toni's father neglected his wife and daughter and spent his life chasing a ghost, a legend long thought dead, and Toni logically knows it's not Sydney's fault but _still_.

 -

So she pokes and prods at Bruce Banner but give her a break, man, he's _Bruce freakin Banner_. This is the man who has the powers of armies at his disposal and yet goes off to the poorest slums and shanty towns in Bangladesh in order to heal people. He's an incredibly fascinating man, brains and heart and power all wrapped up in an unassuming, average appearance. He's the epitome of "don't judge a book by its cover", the ordinary a façade for the extraordinary.

She strolls over to him the moment she meets him, automatic swagger in place, says, "Toni Stark. Thank the gods that someone else speaks English in this place," and offers her hand to shake. 

He gives her an uncertain but open smile as he stretches out a hand to shake hers, and she grins as he introduces himself. "Bruce Banner."

"I know," Toni replies, corners of her lips twisting upward into a smirk. "I'm a big fan of your work, Doctor. It's amazing what you've accomplished."

"You too, Ms. Stark," Bruce says, and she waggles her finger.

"Uh-uh," she corrects, voice teasing but the slightest edge of warning underlying it, "That's Dr. Stark or Toni to you, Dr. Banner."

He smiles, easy and soft for a man with a raging green hulk contained inside of his small body, and says: "Then I'm just Bruce to you, Toni."

"I'm good with that," Toni says easily, grinning.

- 

_You just love making yourself miserable, don’t you? You are so emotionally stunted you wouldn’t know a good thing if it looked you straight in the eye._

Toni does care about people, just not many. People don't tend to care about her, don't tend to show her love and affection, so why should she be loving in return? 

_You are nothing more than a self-promoting political lackey _who is only here because they need someone who will jump on the wire without even asking.__

An infuriated gasp. Well, she  _was_ asking for it. Sure, Sydney may not deserve every word that Toni is heaping on her but  _boy_ does it feel good to let it all out and Sydney is a convenient target.

And there is a grain of truth in what she says, no matter how much it may hurt Sydney. 

_You are just an insecure little woman. You hide behind your shiny toys to compensate for what you know you lack._

Fuck you, Sydney Rogers. She builds those 'shiny toys' to help people, to save worlds and cities and lives. She doesn't build weapons anymore, at least not ones that don't go directly into police or Iron Warrior's hands. 

Sure, she's still insecure, and sure, they're still shiny toys and gadgets sometimes, but that's just how she works. Sydney, she knows from files and from Peggy Carter's notes, loves to draw to relax and to cope. Well, this is Toni's coping mechanism, her relaxing activity- she builds. She creates.

 _What I_ lack _is common sense! How could I have not seen that all there is to you is just some stereotypical soldier mindset! All you do is follow orders! You really are the perfect picture of obedience, aren’t you?_

Toni knows that Sydney isn't a robot, a SHIELD drone, but it feels like it now just as it has earlier in the day. Sydney is a soldier at her core, a serum-enhanced soldier but a soldier nonetheless, and so far all Toni has seen her do is follow SHIELD's orders.

 _At least_ I _have a purpose! Without the armor—you’ve got nothing. No wonder you won’t let anyone get close. You don’t_ _want them to realize that the woman underneath isn’t even worth trying!_

Okay, that was below the belt. That crossed  _way_ too many lines, and Natashalie, over in her corner, seems to realize it, straightening up even as Toni takes a step forward, ready to confront Sydney for it. Her lips curl, pursing into an expression of anger, then-

The ship explodes around them and suddenly Toni's landing in Sydney's Kevlar/spandex-clad arms. Sydney's holding her steady as the world tilts and erupts around them. For a moment, a horrible, nightmare-inducing moment, she's back in Afghanistan, dying as the rockets rip through the chopper, and then a moment later everything's still damaged but the explosions are over with.

"The Iron Warrior suit?" Sydney asks, staring her straight on, and Toni jerks a thumb toward the hangar even as she starts clicking away at the touchscreen-watch on her wrist.

"Be here in thirty seconds," she says, and Sydney nods in affirmation. Taking the nod as the go-ahead to continue, she says: "I can fix the engines if you go take out enemy soldiers."

"Sounds like a plan," Sydney says, giving her a slight smile and a nod, and even as Sydney grabs the shield and runs away Toni thinks  _Fuck_ as she stares at Sydney's retreating ass for a moment.

-

Taking out Loki gives her an adrenaline rush like no other, a sense of pride that carries her through the battle as the Avengers go to town on the aliens like a team that had been working together for ages. They work seamlessly, even Birdbrain, whose skills with a bow have actually  _not_ been exaggerated one bit. They fly through the battle, calling out commands and throwing hammers and shields around each other and shooting off arrows and pulsors in tandem.

It's glorious, absolutely glorious, and then there's a nuke and she's flying through a tear in space.

In her final moments, freefalling through space, she blasts ACDC through the speakers on Iron Warrior. A final  _fuck you_ to Obi, if she had to name why she does it, but it's probably just as much for comfort as it is for defiance.

Then she lands, and everything blacks out for a moment, but then she wakes up and it's to Sydney's gorgeous, perfect face-

"Please tell me nobody kissed me," she chokes out through a cracked, dry throat, thinking _but I don't think I'll care much if it was you,_  and Sydney actually grins as if reading her mind.

 -

They've all been living in the Avengers tower for a few months when Sydney blurts out to Toni that she likes her.

Toni looks Sydney up and down, closes her gaping mouth, and stares for a minute, letting her sandwich fall down to the table.  _Oh, fuck it,_ she thinks, and grabs Sydney and yanks her in for a kiss.

She's allowed this moment, okay? She's allowed this abandon, this peanut butter-soaked kiss with the woman she's been crushing on for the past few months. She's allowed the feeling of joy, of unadulterated happiness as she kisses her friend.

Toni Stark deserves a happy ending, even if that happily-ever-after doesn't last forever. For now, this is what she wants, and for now, this is what she'll get.

"You're wonderful," is the first thing Sydney says when they part, and Toni smirks.

"I know," she says, seemingly flippant, but it sounds more like _I try_ than anything else.

And for Toni, trying has always been enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated!


End file.
